Yesterday, Andy told me that when we first got Charlie, he did a Google search for "how to play with your dog." After I stopped cackling and was able to breathe again, I started to get a little worried. Will it be worse when we have a kid?
"How to love your child"
"Am I supposed to hug my baby"
"Can you feed steak to an infant"
My mom got a new phone yesterday, apparently. The sales guy was showing her how to send text messages (which was probably unnecessary and insulting, now that I think about it). He accidentally sent me a string of gibberish, and received this in response:
Two horrible things happened on Friday. Well. One slightly embarrassing thing and one completely traumatizing thing.
First, I went to a conference, which entailed a 4-hour round trip drive. Getting up at 5 am to drive a minivan through Utah rush hour - all sorts of wrong. The convention center was this fairly new, very elaborate-looking space. A lot of white, a lot of windows, and a lot of very tall and narrow escalators that made you feel like you were on a conveyor belt to outer space. The whole thing felt very Scientology.
But I digress. The embarrassing part happened in the bathroom, which is hardly surprising. The wall surrounding mirrors above the sink was really visually interesting. Behind a glass wall, there was this arrangement of logs that had been quartered and cut to about 4 inches in length, and stacked so that the rings of the tree faced outward. I thought it was awesome and would make a really cool texture for something, like the background on an iPad (because these are the things I think about). I was determined to get a picture of this, so I found an out-of-the-way bathroom that was empty at the time.
Just as I'm standing there in front of the sink holding up my phone, about to take a picture of the wall, a lady walks in and gives me total stink-eye. Like, "
I'm middle-aged and bitter and have to pee and now here's this vain little brat taking a picture of herself in the mirror and she doesn't even look cute so I don't know what her deal is." It was a very expressive stink-eye. Or maybe I was imagining the whole thing and she didn't even really notice, and is just one of those people whose default facial expression looks pissy.
I'm already over it.
The other thing that happened was one of the absolute worst things ever. Still not over it.
After my 12+ hour day finally ended and I was back in my car, I hightailed it to the liquor store, because obviously. Andy called me while I was there, and he mentioned that he was about to take Charlie for a walk. I picked up some Cinco de Mayo inspired libations (that, as of May 6th, I have completely lost interest in and which will gather dust in my cabinet until next May) and made my way home. I was starving, I had to pee, and my blood alcohol level was dangerously low. Tequila. STAT.
I pulled into the driveway and came upon an ominous scene. The front door was ajar by about 6 inches. Ajax was creeping onto the porch with this look of abject horror on his little cat face.
What am I doing? This world is so big and so dangerous and I just remembered that I am terrified of everything OH MY GOD the things that I have seen.
I leaped out of the car with the engine still running and bolted inside with total disregard to the murderer who was obviously still lurking somewhere inside the house. I wasn't sure if Ajax had darted back inside or if he panicked and ran out into the world, so my first concern was to find him. Luckily, he was sitting just inside the doorway to the kitchen, breathing heavily and looking horrified. The heavy breathing is kind of par for the course for Ajax, though. He's husky. Or maybe just
big-boned.
At this point, I noticed Charlie's leash laying on the floor in the middle of the entry hall, making me think that Andy and Charlie were not on a walk, but were, in fact, strung up on some meat hooks in the basement while some Buffalo Bill style killer was preparing to make skin suits out of them. I don't even have any idea what you would do with a dog skin suit, besides put it on a slightly smaller dog, but that's the way my brain works.
This whole time, I was also trying not to acknowledge the likelihood that if Ajax had discovered the open door and ventured through it, Hadley almost certainly found it first. I was sure she was gone forever. She was either already flattened beneath a tire, or had just wandered off and immediately found a new family because she is bizarrely lovable and friendly. I was trying so hard not to cry, and also trying to yell for her, and yell for Andy, but it was like that nightmare where you try to scream and nothing comes out. I ran all over the house looking for sweet little Hadley, all the while scanning the floors and walls for trails of blood.
Finally, Hadley came strolling out of some dark recess of the utility room, chirping her weirdly adorable little purr-meow like she didn't have a care in the world. Because she didn't. She never will. Because she's a cat. I was so relieved to see her that I finally remembered how full my bladder was and had to sprint to the bathroom without even petting her.
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| This little face |
Ultimately, there was no blood, there were no stray body parts, no meat hooks, no skin suits. Moral of the story is that Andy needs to stop trying to slam the door shut behind him, because it will only bounce back open. The other moral is that if you come home and your front door is hanging wide open for no apparent reason, you need to do the following:
- Take a deep breath and ask yourself if you have a husband or perhaps a roommate who doesn't understand the intricate process of fully shutting a door
- If the answer to #1 is no, think about maybe not going inside the house and just calling the police instead
- It's ok to leave the car running until you determine the answer to #1, in case you need to GTFO in a hurry because there's an ax-wielding intruder in your house
- Regardless of the explanation, you're going to need a little therapy after something like this
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| That is a mason jar goblet |
